Whistler made mother of all portraits

At the turn of the last century, James McNeill Whistler was one of the most famous artists in the world. Today, 100 years after his death, his name is still a household word thanks to his mother.

When Whistler first exhibited the painting he titled "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother" at London's Royal Academy in 1872, many viewers found the painting remarkable. Some objected to its extreme austerity, which they judged too unsentimental for the portrait of a cherished mother. Others found it an insightful evocation of the sitter's Protestant character. Nobody guessed, however, what a lasting impact the portrait of Anna McNeill Whistler would have on the popular psyche.

Whistler's Mother is one of a handful of artworks -- with Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," Grant Wood's "American Gothic" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" -- that have moved beyond general appreciation as "masterpieces" to become images freely appropriated by popular culture. These icons occupy a kind of communal Hall of Fame, where they require no identification because every viewer has seen them a thousand times: at home, in a magazine ad, in a Saturday morning cartoon, on a billboard, a greeting card, a necktie, a Halloween costume or in a political caricature. Over the past century, Whistler's Mother has been revered, reviled and revamped, its very familiarity an invitation to inscribe on it words and meanings updated for the issues of each new generation.

How did this work make the quantum leap from controversial modern painting to icon?

Often exhibited

The painting's early fame was due in part to the frequency with which it was exhibited in England, France and the United States in the first decades of its existence, coupled with Whistler's gift for keeping himself in the limelight. Newspaper caricatures accompanied every major showing of the painting, beginning with the first British cartoons of 1872. Official reproductions in mezzotint, lithography and photography soon followed, making it possible for the image to hang in thousands of American and European homes.

In Whistler's portrait, the ramrod posture of the sitter, her unflinching gaze, the demure lace cap and sober dress all convey respectability. These features would have reminded many Victorian viewers of the ancestral photographs that filled their family albums and adorned their parlor tables.

In both pose and coloration, Whistler's painting echoes conventional portrait photographs of the period. Older women were often posed in a sitting position by photographers because they were likely to tire while standing for the long exposure times necessary to capture a crisp image; the seated profile view also was considered more flattering to women past their prime.

Queen Victoria, who rivaled Whistler's Mother as the most iconic matron of her age, often was photographed in this pose, designed to underscore her status as matriarch of the British Empire. The fact that Whistler's Mother triggered memories of family relics and state portraits allowed the picture to be adopted as an authoritative symbol of motherhood.

An enormous leap in the popularity of Whistler's Mother occurred in 1932 when the painting was shown at the Museum of Modern Art and subsequently toured the United States over a two-year period. The picture made headlines in every city where it stopped; repeatedly photographed with adoring boy scouts, armed guards and politicians, the painting became a veritable celebrity.

In May 1934 the U.S. Postal Service used Whistler's Mother on a stamp honoring Mother's Day, dubbing it "a masterpiece of the mails." In the same year, Cole Porter's lyrics for the song "You're the Top" included the now-famous reference to Whistler's picture: "You're an O'Neill drama, you're Whistler's mama, you're camembert."

References and images dating from the World War II years indicate that "Whistler's Mother" was by now a household term, and with familiarity came a less reverent form of appropriation. In 1942 a new plane, the Douglas A-26 bomber, was nicknamed "Whistler's Mother," presumably because of the whistling sound of the bombs it released. The "Whistler's mother-in-law" was a popular dance hit recorded by Woody Herman. From this point on, cultural references to the famous portrait are increasingly lighthearted and wide-ranging.

A persistent form of humor explores what Mrs. Whistler might be looking at. One lampoon of this sort, created by Disney animator Ward Kimball in 1964, shows Mrs. Whistler demurely watching television, still a relatively recent addition to many households. Decades later, a 1982 Newsweek cover showed her belly-up to a computer monitor accompanied by the words "Home is where the computer is." In both instances, the juxtaposition of new technology with the archaic figure of Mrs. Whistler epitomizes the "shock of the new."

But what's she thinking?

If it is tempting to speculate about what she might be seeing, the invitation to guess what Whistler's mum might be thinking has proved irresistible. Her association with old age and prudishness makes the picture a perfect blackboard for bawdy lampoons; we see her smoking cigarettes, blowing party horns, or stripping down to her lacy undies. Her very immobility, it seems, is provocative; we feel compelled to help Whistler's mother loosen up, as well as stand up and stretch her legs occasionally.

Ever since Aubrey Beardsley depicted himself as Whistler's Mother in a 1891 sketch, we have delighted in merging our identities with the stony countenance of this respectable old lady. Such eminent personalities as Donald Duck, Bullwinkle the Moose, Tigger, Wile E. Coyote, the Animaniacs, the Muppets and Barbie have struck Mrs. Whistler's pose.

A darling of pop culture for more than a century, Whistler's Mother is still a powerful symbol of our love, respect and occasional annoyance with our mothers. Simultaneously, the picture is recognized as a visual synonym for "the masterpiece," that priceless and consummate example of human creativity. Is it Whistler's groundbreaking painting that we prize so highly, or is it instead "Whistler's Mother" the icon? One thing is certain: the image is now communal property. In watching the 1997 comic film "Bean," one could feel every man, woman and child in the theater cringe when clumsy Mr. Bean wipes away the famous face after sneezing on the painting. Sneeze or no sneeze, Whistler's Mother is here (in our hearts and minds) to stay.

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Martha Tedeschi is curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. This article is adapted from her contribution to "Whistler's Mother: An American Icon," edited by Margaret F. MacDonald.Whistler's Mother is featured in the exhibition "In Grey and Black" at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland from June 21 through Oct. 4.